By Madison Fessler / The Jambar
Hank Green, a content creator, kicked off the Skeggs Lecture Series on Sept. 26 at Stambaugh Auditorium.
Green’s lecture focused primarily on the internet, delving into surrounding topics like content, social media, various platforms and the internet’s inner workings.
“How this sort of interface between all of our decisions and then the ways that they try to control us,” Green said. “Also my role that I play in that, which is that I’m sort of trying to control you by making you watch science content.”
Green said he picked this topic as it’s his true area of expertise and only dabbles in other areas of interest which he includes in his videos.
“[The internet is something] that I really understand more than almost anyone is how media is changing and how people who create content and how people who consume content and the platforms that host that content are all interacting to create kind of a new world,” Green said.
Green said he started this journey on the internet because his older brother, John Green, was passionate about creating content on YouTube. Hank Green’s obsession with subculture played into his love of content creation.
“As all of these new content platforms come up, there’s always new cultures inside of them, new genres being created, new communities being created and I just love to get my fingers into that. It’s so interesting,” Green said.
The Green brothers had several conversations around what kind of content to produce, ultimately deciding to lean educational after receiving a grant from YouTube. They enjoyed making educational content, however the effort required to create it outweighed what the brothers could do by themselves.
Before Hank Green’s lecture, students were invited to have a Q&A session with him. Questions ranged from his opinion on certain platforms to his favorite research topics.
Green said being influential to younger generations gives him a pressure to be a good person.
“My biggest fear is ruining myself for people,” Green said. “Like making some mistake or having some opinion where people go ‘Oh, I thought he was a good one and I don’t think he’s a good one anymore.’”
Green started posting videos on YouTube when he was 27-years-old and already married. He attributes these things as to why he doesn’t make big mistakes.
“I do think that [himself and John] have always tried to be more careful than the average YouTuber and also when we first started, it wasn’t a high status enterprise the way that it is now,” Green said. “We come from [the beginning] era of YouTube, it doesn’t feel like it would make any sense to do something that is bad in order to gain an audience.”
Green said he used mistakes he didn’t want to make, and had seen others make, as plot points for his books.
“People have made themselves miserable because they’re not actually working. They’re not pushing for happiness, they’re pushing for status and attention,” Green said.
During the student session and his lecture, Green emphasized his love of learning. He stressed that with learning comes the hardship of understanding.
“It’s got to be a little bit hard for me to learn stuff. Otherwise, I don’t have any empathy for all the people I’m helping learn stuff,” Green said.